pawaPass is helping businesses trust the people they interact with online or remotely, using facial biometrics and other supporting digital data.
Millions of people are coming online in Africa, and need to access services and protect their online accounts. At the same time, the surge in online fraud, deep fakes and abuse, poses a threat to offering those services in a cost-efficient, secure, and user-friendly way.
Enter pawaPass, founded in 2022 by Sylvia Brune, once part of the management team at 88mph and 440NG, some of the earliest Africa-based accelerators. The startup solves this problem by ascertaining that users are real humans and that they are unique, within the business’ user base.
“If you can know for sure that a person is a real human and that this person has only a single account with you, you can trust your dealings with this person. If this person abuses your services or commits fraud, you can block them and ensure they aren’t able to create new accounts, using their face,” said Brune.
The gap pawaPass is filling, she said, is trust.
“Africa is home to the youngest population in the world. The average age, I think, is like 19. This means that in the next decade, the best way to ensure access to global opportunities like jobs, trade, access services remotely, is through some form of high trust system,” Brune said.
“Currently, a significant portion of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population faces barriers to economic participation through a mix of stigma and real threats of fraud. pawaPass is on a mission to address this disparity.”
Rather than relying solely on traditional identification methods, however, which may exclude genuine users and enable non-unique identities to exploit systems, pawaPass emphasises the use of facial biometrics as the foundational element of identity validation. Supplementary data points can then be incorporated to bolster the verification process.
“To ensure the robustness of our approach, extensive testing and research have been undertaken to select a biometric technology that is resilient against fraudulent attempts, including deep fakes, masks, and other spoofing techniques,” Brune said.
pawaPass, which is funded by angel investors (we all have an idea!), and revenue, says its services are currently utilised in five African countries.
“We have projects kicking off any moment from now in Zambia, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania. Our vision is to progressively expand our reach to encompass every region across the continent,” said Brune.
“Honestly, it’s been a slow and challenging journey. Businesses need to find a balance between strong user verification while not harming growth and retention. We are still working on making the process faster and simpler. And every month we are seeing improvements.”
